let’s read a book. or a bunch

Okay, so I am obviously not so great about updates here. One reason, honest injun, is that I read really fast and I don’t want to half ass it. The other reason is that I am busy studying for a certification exam I’m taking at the end of June. It seems like that’s a long ways away but I am totally freaking out. Hooray for freaking out.

So, in the interest of giving you something to look at, I’m going to do another quick round up of books I don’t think really deserve their own posting. This means that books like “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” and “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” won’t be covered in this one, but I promise to get to them this week with a better write up than these others are going to get.

So, enough begging forgiveness (did that sound like begging? no? well, it kinda was) and on to what little content I am throwing up today.

Oh, did I mention I’m not going to put up pictures? Well, now you know. 🙂

*****

The Road To Omaha, Robert Ludlum.

Remember a bit ago when I did The Road to Gandolfo? Same guys, back for more. Same crazy General Hawk, same wussy lawyer Sam, different scam. In the first one, they were kidnapping the Pope. In this one, it seems that someone’s gotten their hands on some old agreements between the US Government and some little unknown Indian tribe and it just might be that that Indian tribe owns Nebraska.

Worth reading, a bit long at times. It’d be a good beach/plane read where you leave it for the next person. Strangely enough, the lady who read this before me did not agree. In very nice cursive it says “Yuk! Waste of time. Feb 93” on the inside cover. Maybe, like a fine wine, it just needed some time to age.

The Road To Omaha by Robert Ludlum, 570 pages

*****

Greywalker, Kat Richardson

You know how sometimes you buy a book because it’s cheap? Yeah, well, that’s my excuse. Harper gets attacked and comes out with this weird ability to be in both our world and some other one where nasty half dead things lie in wait. Oh yeah, this also means she can see ghosts and feel evil and so she decides to play with the vampires and witches and stuff. It’s also set in Seattle.

Is is a great book? Nah. It’s mildly entertaining. If you’re looking for the while “normal world meets other” stuff, check out the Sookie Stackhouse books. They’re way more fun.

Greywalker by Kat Richardson, 341 pages

*****

The Broken Window, Jeffery Deaver

I almost feel bad throwing this in here because I really like Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme series. Have you seen that Bone Collector movie with Angelina Jolie and that other totally cute guy whose name I can’t remember now? It’s also got Queen Latifa in it although in the book her character is actually a gay guy.

ANYWAY, this is that same series. And this latest novel doesn’t really disappoint although they are semi formulaic crime mysteries. In this one, people are being killed and other people are set up to take the fall. As usual, it’s who done it. The twist in THIS novel is that it’s obvious someone has access to all sorts of very detailed information about people and their lives, so it looks like it’s OMG COMPUTERS and BIG BROTHER all up in here. Still, these are good characters and pretty good stories and I’d actually recommend any of the series. Might want to read them in order though.

The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver, 596 pages

*****

L.A. Confidential , James Ellroy

You’ve all seen the movie. You know what it’s about. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s a “corruption in LA in the 1950’s” novel. See the movie, it’s good.

The book? Eh. It’s okay. I actually didn’t get anything additional out of it, but then it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the screen version. There are a lot of characters, and I found myself getting a wee bit lost… but I kind of blame that on trying to memorize silly equations for this damn test and having no gray matter to dedicate to this one. On the other hand, I now know and understand that the PERT equation is (P+4M+o)/6 and that it’s the only estimating method that’s a weighted average… and that’s going to be on the test, not who Mickey Cohen talked to, so that’s okay with me.

Okay, I actually read Greywalker, as well as the two follow-up books in the series. Yeah, they’re not great, but it’s an interesting premise. The third one of the series, “Underground”, has some interesting parts, because it melds Native American mythology and the Seattle Underground.

I read these because Kat Richardson had a short Greywalker story in a book called “Mean Streets” that I thought was really good. The story was called “The Third Death of the Little Clay Dog”.

I mostly checked out “Mean Streets” because it had a Dresden Files story in it, but I liked the four short stories enough that I checked out additional books from the King County Library by each of the authors.

On May 31, 2009 at 6:52 am amillionpages said:

Hm. Well, I don’t think it was the worst book I’ve ever read, but I don’t think that it’s the best example of that sort of story.

The Seattle based thing has it’s appeal though.

Wow, that last post is just a wall of text.. I should try to fix that. Horrible.

so, what’s going on here?

Ever wonder how many books you read in a year? Or, maybe, how many pages? How long do you think it will take to get to a million?
I'm going to find out!
Starting Jan 1, 2009, we'll see how long it takes.